Bryant: Rickey Henderson wasn’t as good as he says he was — he was better
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Howard Bryant, Columnist, ESPN.com
Before he was a somebody, Rickey Henderson was already a constituency of one.
Professional athletes are a different species, world-class talents whose sense of self and possibility do not often fit within the confines of the doubts and fears natural to the rest of us. But Rickey, the physical specimen who thought he could play baseball forever before he died at 65 on Friday night in Oakland, California, from complications with pneumonia and asthma, stood even beyond his most gilded peers on the confidence scale.
I once asked him when he knew he had the talent to play Major League Baseball, to be on the same field with Reggie Jackson and Nolan Ryan, to play the same game Willie Mays and Henry Aaron played. To live at the altitude of the gods. As easily as telling the time, Rickey answered, “I don’t know. Somewhere between fifth and sixth grade.”
When Henderson was a 10th grader at Oakland Technical High School, his new baseball coach, Bob Cryer, fanned the players out and pointed to those he wanted to report to the varsity and then junior varsity. Rickey was sent to the JV. The other kids protested, tried to tell the coach that Rickey, who might have looked smaller than everyone else, was a legend. The kids told the coach he was making a mistake.
Taking matters into his own hands, Rickey walked up to the new coach and said, “You must not know who I am.”
After he was a somebody, everybody knew who Rickey Henderson was. Start with the name. A one-namer. That meant he was a star. Ubiquitous. Baseball used to have one-namers — Ruth, Reggie, Willie, Pete, Rickey — now it’s so desperate for a show-stopper like them, the league is likely to put a security detail on Shohei Ohtani.
When it was done, Rickey had finished a 24-year career having scored more runs, stolen more bases, hit more home runs to lead off a game and drawn more walks than anyone who ever played. He had fulfilled his own prophecy to be one of the best who ever did it, the greatest ever when it came to hitting first and stealing bases.
We protect our own time, and for those who saw him, Rickey Henderson spanned time, from the early days when he and Billy Martin resurrected the A’s and put Rickey on the map, to the days when his iconoclasm chafed the old guard so much that many did not think he was the automatic Hall of Famer he would one day become.
Rickey amassed a career so big it was impossible to not concede that he knew what he was doing all along. The stories that were once proof that he was bad for the game became the nostalgia we missed, the personality we craved. His personality hadn’t necessarily changed; the numbers were simply too big to dispute. He wasn’t as good as he said he was. He was actually better.
Buck Showalter recalled a game in the early 1990s when the New York Yankees were in Oakland. Showalter was a coach on the Yankees’ staff, and late in the game, the manager was giving out instructions.
“Rickey was hitting against us, and he has us playing no-doubles defense,” Showalter said. “Guarding the lines. Don’t give up anything big. Don’t let him get in scoring position. Then Mattingly turns around and yells into the dugout, ‘What for? If he gets a single, it’s a double anyway!‘”
Wherever you look in baseball, there is Rickey. When you see Kyle Schwarber and Ohtani and Aaron Judge hitting leadoff, you see Rickey: It is because no true leadoff hitter has ever been able to replicate his power that the sport has resorted to letting cleanup hitters start the game.
When baseball laments its lack of action, capitulates to the truth that dry, analytical no-risk baseball has been a failure by enlarging the bases and just giving stolen bases away, you see Rickey, for there was nothing like Rickey leading off, stalking the pitcher, prowling … and attacking.
No one loved Rickey more than the analytics guys, because Rickey did everything they want, with a video-game efficiency.
Get on base more than 40 percent of the time? Check.
Hit for average? Check.
Hit for power? Check.
Hit for leadoff power? Double-check.
Steal bases at an 85 percent success rate? Check.
As a baseball player, Rickey was everything in one. As the analytics godfather Bill James once said, “If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers.”
There were so many moments. There was 1982, when Rickey shattered Lou Brock’s single-season record of 118 stolen bases with 130. There was his first season with the Yankees in 1985, when he scored 146 runs and believes he was robbed of the MVP. There was 1990, the year Rickey did win the MVP.
But his Mount Everest for me was the 1989 postseason, starting with the American League Championship Series destruction of Toronto in which he hit .400 with two home runs and scored eight runs in five games to earn series MVP. Rickey followed it up with a World Series in which he hit .474 as the A’s swept the San Francisco Giants.
Over those nine games, Rickey went 15-for-34, scored 12 runs, hit three home runs, walked nine times (with only two strikeouts) and stole 11 of 12 bases. The numbers were impressive but the value was in Rickey proving, at long last, that he was a championship-level ballplayer, a winning ballplayer. As remarkable as it sounds, there was once a belief in the game that Rickey did not always make a team better. The 1989 playoffs erased any doubt that Rickey was one of the great impact players of his time.
His toughness had always been underrated, and that toughness destroyed the Blue Jays. It was what his Oakland teammate Dennis Eckersley said made him so dangerous. He could not be intimidated.
It reminded me of the time Rickey and I were sitting in the dugout in spring training in Mesa, Arizona, talking about competition and he suddenly said, “Did I ever tell you the time I punched Richard Dotson in the face?”
The date was Sept. 10, 1984, A’s-White Sox at the Oakland Coliseum. Dotson was a serviceable major league pitcher for the better part of his 12-year career, mostly with the White Sox. He even won 22 games in 1983 and finished fourth on the Cy Young ballot. In the summer of 1984, he made his first and only All-Star team, on which he and Rickey were teammates.
But later that season, neither team was going anywhere. In the bottom of the first, Dotson starts Rickey off with a fastball … right under his chin, dropping him to one knee. Rickey eventually flies out to right, but not before Dotson throws another one near his cheekbone.
“Next time up,” Rickey says, “I’m standing two steps in front of the plate, damn near standing on the plate, begging this Mother Hubbard to hit me. So he throws four balls way, way outside. OK, I take my walk, but I’m not jogging to first base. I’m strolling to first. I’m jangling to first. I’m taking my sweet time to first. Then I take off for second. Boom. Steal second.”
Rickey is on second in the bottom of the third with one out, and Dotson is angry. Rickey stretches out, like he’s about to take third. Dotson is so worried about Rickey, he walks Dwayne Murphy.
With Dotson facing Dave Kingman, the giant slugger who never took a check swing in his life, Rickey taunts him, threatening to steal third. Kingman takes two enormous hacks; insulted, Dotson drills Kingman with a fastball to the body. Rickey is watching the whole thing from second base.
“Dave walks to first. Everything’s cool — and then he jets to the mound and punches Dotson. Just unloads on him. Now everybody coming off the bench. Both benches. And here we go. I’m on second base and I come in flying and BOOM! I pop Dotson right in his face.”
Home plate umpire Vic Voltaggio ejects Kingman. (Rickey got free punches on Dotson; Voltaggio doesn’t toss him.) White Sox manager Tony La Russa, leaves Dotson in the game. First pissed, now punched, Dotson walks Bruce Bochte, scoring Rickey for the only run of the game. The A’s win 1-0, all because Rickey performed mental surgery on Dotson. Other than Kingman and Rickey tattooing Dotson’s face, Oakland never even got a hit in the inning.
Nobody on the Chicago bench was more enraged than La Russa. The next night, Rickey was chopping it up with another East Bay legend, White Sox leadoff man Rudy Law, who was grim-faced.
“He tells me, ‘Rickey, Tony held a meeting, and the meeting wasn’t about the fight. It was all about you.’ And I was like, ‘Me? It wasn’t about the team, or Kingman?’ Rudy said, ‘No, it was all about getting you.’
“OK, so now, it’s fight day. And I said to everybody, ‘If anything happens, I better see everybody out there, or after I’m done whipping their ass, anyone on our team I see on the bench or slow to get out there, I’m whipping your asses, too.'”
Just before the first pitch, Rickey had one last message to deliver.
“I run over to their dugout and I say to Tony, ‘If anything happens out there today, I’m not coming to the mound for the pitcher. I’m coming straight here, right to the dugout — to get you.'”
La Russa and Rickey would win a championship together in that great year of 1989 and an American League pennant in 1990. In between, the two massive personalities would clash. La Russa was convinced that Rickey’s personality prevented him from being even greater.
It was a common sentiment, and it was true: Rickey Henderson understood the lessons of American capitalism better than his teachers. Money was the mode of currency to express all things — value, appreciation, power — and if anyone had more than he, they had better have the résumé to prove it. Even if they did, that might not be enough.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Rickey would withhold his services if he felt the game was treating him unfairly — even when he was in the wrong, like the years he took the security of a long-term contract and then fumed when annual free agent deals would exceed his own.
The constant sparring over money convinced La Russa that Henderson, in his words, “wasn’t a great player.” Talented, yes. Game-changing, yes. But to La Russa, great players never allowed anything to come before winning, and Rickey did.
And yet Rickey went from one of the most disliked players in the game to one of the most beloved over the course of his career, in large part because of his flamboyant personality and style. Whether the Rickey stories were true or not stopped being the point. Even Rickey would begin to admit to stories that never happened because the legend was more important than the facts. The legends live on.
One story, which was definitely true, articulated Rickey’s arc. It occurred May 30, 1994, with the A’s making their first trip of the season to Toronto. The team bus left the Toronto Sheraton, rolled down Spadina Avenue, and as it rumbled to the SkyDome, it past a billboard on Blue Jays Way containing just three elements: a photo of an elated Joe Carter, the date of his epic home run, and the time it landed in the seats to give Toronto the championship in 1993. No other words.
The billboard sparked a question that bounced around the A’s bus as it pulled into the ballpark: “Where were you when Joe Carter hit the home run?” From the front to the back, players, coaches, and staff recalled their whereabouts during Canada’s most famous baseball moment. Dave Feldman, the statistician for KRON-TV, the A’s television affiliate, said he was sitting on the couch, watching the game in his San Francisco apartment, totally stunned. More voices followed, with more recollections.
Then, a lone voice boomed from the very back of the bus.
“I was on second base!”
It was Rickey.
The only thing that did more for Rickey’s reputation than his hilarity was his sheer dominance. “Rickey was great, sure, but when Rickey put his nose in it — those days when he really wanted to play — there was nobody better,” Eckersley said.
Like the time in 1998, when Rickey was close to done. He was 39, and his manager, Art Howe, lamented that Rickey couldn’t get around on a fastball anymore. As proof, he would strike out 118 times that year, the most ever in a single season for him. That meant he was vulnerable, and the youngsters thought they could take him out.
“One time we were in Cleveland, and Kenny Lofton was leading the league in stolen bases,” recalled Ron Washington, the A’s third base coach at the time. “And here’s Lofton across the diamond chirping at Rickey: ‘See that old man on the other side of the field? There’s a new sheriff in town. That dude is done.’ And don’t you know, Rickey just went on a tear. Second — gone. Third — gone. He’d come back into the dugout and say, ‘If Rickey sleep, let Rickey sleep.’ He just took whatever he wanted. When you talked s— to him the way Kenny Lofton did, he reminded you that he was still Rickey Henderson.”
When it all coalesced into a titanic career, even La Russa had to reassess.
“Rickey knew his body better than anybody else,” La Russa later told me. “I have to admit I was wrong about him. As a manager, I would ask him how he felt and he would tell me, ’70 percent.’ Seventy percent wasn’t good enough for him to play, but I’d tell him 70 percent of Rickey Henderson was better than 100 percent of anybody else I had on the bench. There were times he did not play even when that 70 percent, I thought, could have benefited the team, but when you look at the end results of what he did, the totality of his career achievements cannot be argued.”
His detractors were not completely wrong. Rickey was difficult. Rickey was a force of his own making, for better and, for a manager, often for worse — especially when he saw himself as underpaid. But if the games are about numbers, as we are told they are, Rickey Henderson stood vindicated, and in the end, that is why he was loved.
“Tell me something,” he once said to me during a discussion over malingering. “How in the hell you gonna steal 1,400 bases jaking it? How could you do what I did, for as long as I did it, and say I didn’t want to be out there?”
Sports
College football FPI release: The numbers behind the top teams, best matchups and championship odds
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Neil Paine
There’s no going back now. The College Football Playoff’s expanded 12-team format made its debut last season, reshaping the postseason as we knew it and showing just how brutal the path to a national championship can be. Add in a flurry of conference realignments (with the grueling travel schedules they created), the ever-increasing influence of the transfer portal and what might be the dawn of an entirely new financial model underpinning the sport, and college football could be changing faster — and more dramatically — than at any point in its history.
As part of our efforts to keep track of these seismic changes, we are relaunching our Football Power Index (FPI) ratings and projections for the 2025 season this week. Just to refresh our memories, the FPI is a predictive rating system that estimates each FBS team’s strength (in points per game relative to the national average) on offense, defense and special teams, making adjustments for starters lost, recruiting talent and other personnel changes. Those numbers are then plugged into the schedule, and everything is simulated 20,000 times to track each team’s odds of winning its conference, making the playoff and advancing through to the national title.
The preseason forecast features plenty of familiar teams at the top, but also plenty of candidates to crash the playoff party. Let’s begin our tour of the data by looking at the teams most likely to win the 2025 championship.
The top of the list is dominated by SEC teams — 11 of the top 19 hail from the conference, including the two most likely champions in Texas and Georgia (and three of the top four, if you include Alabama).
A year after Ohio State and the Big Ten won the first 12-team playoff title — with only three SEC squads making the field — the FPI model expects a nation-high 4.6 playoff teams to hail from the conference (nearly twice as many from any other) with a 61% chance that the SEC produces the eventual champion.
SEC and Big Ten remain on top
If not an SEC team, then the championship will probably go to another familiar power conference program, with a trio of Big Ten teams — Ohio State, Penn State and Oregon — checking in next on the odds list, a year after each went to the CFP quarterfinals (or beyond). A high share of returning production could also have coach Dabo Swinney and Clemson representing the ACC in the playoff again — perhaps making it past the the first round this time.
And if we’re looking for somewhat refreshed entries after down seasons, Auburn, Michigan and Oklahoma are all among the 17 most likely champions after each finished outside the top 25 in the FPI last season. All three made major moves in the offseason to spark their surges: Auburn brought in a top-10 transfer class headlined by former Sooners quarterback Jackson Arnold; Michigan brought in a big recruiting class and a few top transfers; and Oklahoma revamped its offensive core, with prized quarterback John Mateer at the helm — plus its returning production otherwise — helping vault the Sooners back into the national picture.
Playoff odds for the Group of 5
As always, the Group of 5 is also an important part of the playoff puzzle, in no small part because of its guaranteed spot in the bracket (reserved for the fifth-highest ranked conference champion). Here are the non-power conference teams with the highest chance to make the playoff in the FPI model.
Even after losing record-setting running back Ashton Jeanty, the Broncos remain the most likely Group of 5 team to make the playoff — though Tulane (despite losing quarterback Darian Mensah and running back Makhi Hughes) and UNLV (coming off an 11-win season, though quarterback Hajj-Malik Williams has moved on) aren’t far behind. With several contenders bunched together and no clear juggernaut, the G5 race for a playoff spot is something to keep a close eye on — including its ripple effects on the rest of the bracket.
Next, let’s look at the projected top units on each side of the ball in 2025, according to the FPI.
If we want another illustration of how dominant the best teams are, the top four projected offensive teams by the FPI — Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Ohio State — are also the top four projected defensive teams, with Alabama and Texas rising 10 spots apiece from 2024 on the offensive side.
That kind of balance on both sides of the ball is what separates this year’s top contenders from the pack, especially in a postseason format that requires versatility over three or four high-stakes playoff games. The rest of the top 20 on both sides also contain some of the biggest offseason movers in those unit rankings — such as Oregon (up 11 spots on defense), Florida (up 27 spots on offense), Clemson (up 14 spots on defense), South Carolina (up 24 spots on offense) and Texas A&M and Auburn (who are up double-digit spots on both sides).
Biggest risers and fallers
Speaking of those offseason changes, let’s look at the programs that have gained (or lost) the most ground overall in the FPI entering 2025.
FAU is projected to improve by at least 25 ranking slots on offense, defense and special teams after adding quite a few transfers — including ex-Western Kentucky quarterback Caden Veltkamp — ahead of coach Zach Kittley’s first season in Boca Raton. Among power conference teams, Florida State is looking to bounce back from last season’s nightmare with the help of a great offseason in the portal, headlined by the addition of former USC wide receiver Duce Robinson, while ACC rival, Stanford, has the nation’s 13th-highest share of production returning for 2025.
At the other end, Army has lost roughly half of its production from last season’s impressive 12-2 team, including top rusher Kanye Udoh and sack leader Elo Modozie; the FPI predicts regression will hit the Knights hard.
And in terms of power teams who had competitive FPI ratings a year ago, Louisville is projected to drop from No. 12 to 41 after bidding farewell to quarterback Tyler Shough, wide receiver Ja’Corey Brooks, starting offensive tackle Monroe Mills, sack leader Ashton Gillotte and each of its three leading defensive backs in interceptions. Similarly, Colorado sustained heavy offseason losses, and regression might also come for Indiana and Iowa State after a pair of outstanding 11-win seasons.
(Where did the top transfer portal teams land on the most improved list? In addition to FSU and Auburn, Nebraska is up 13 spots to No. 25, Texas Tech rose nine spots to No. 35 and Texas A&M was up seven slots to No. 8. But keep an eye on Ole Miss, which was among the more active portal teams but fell eight spots in the FPI rankings anyway without quarterback Jaxson Dart.)
Best matchups in 2025?
Finally, let’s close by circling the biggest matchups of the 2025 season on our college football calendars. According to the FPI’s projected ratings for both teams, these are the most anticipated games of the season — matchups in which each squad ranks highly, helping to create a high combined matchup quality on ESPN Analytics’ 0-100 scale:
We’ll get one of the best games of the season practically right away, with Week 1 providing Texas-Ohio State — a battle of top-four preseason FPI teams — on Saturday, Aug. 30. That same day, we’ll also get LSU-Clemson, and the next day, we’ll watch Notre Dame travel to Miami to face the Hurricanes in a top-10 FPI matchup.
That sets the tone for a regular season that will feature at least one matchup rated 90 or higher in the FPI matchup quality metric almost every week. But the best week by that metric — with three games rated 90 or higher and five rated 85 or higher — is Week 14, with Ohio State-Michigan, Auburn-Alabama and all of the other usual late-season rivalry games. In addition, three other weeks — Week 5, Week 7 and Week 10 — will carry five games each with a matchup rating of 85 or higher.
That’s a loaded calendar, and it reflects how the meaning of each college football Saturday is changing. Under the old system, one bad week could doom a contender. Now, teams can afford a stumble … but the trade-off is that they also need to prove themselves over more games against top-tier teams.
Regular-season showdowns still matter, too — especially for seeding, byes and home-field advantage. But there’s also more room for redemption, which we saw embodied by both championship game combatant’s last season. And through it all, the FPI gives us a roadmap to help navigate what’s shaping up to be another wild and transformative season of college football.
Heisman Trophy winners Mark Ingram, Cam Newton and Robert Griffin III and former AP National Player of the Year Ndamukong Suh are on the ballot for the 2026 College Football Hall of Fame class.
The National Football Foundation released the ballot Monday for the class that will be announced in January. It includes 79 players and nine coaches from the Football Bowl Subdivision and 100 players and 35 coaches from lower levels.
Ingram became Alabama’s first Heisman winner in 2009 after running for 1,658 yards and 20 touchdowns. Newton in 2010 was just the third player in FBS history with 20 passing and 20 rushing touchdowns. Griffin in 2011 led the nation in points responsible for and ranked second in total offense.
Suh was a force for Nebraska in 2009 and became the first defensive lineman in 15 seasons to be named a finalist for the Heisman Trophy. He finished fourth in voting but was honored as the nation’s top player by The Associated Press.
Among other players on the ballot are Iowa’s Brad Banks, Colorado’s Eric Bieniemy, Oklahoma State’s Dez Bryant, Penn State’s Ki-Jana Carter, Pittsburgh’s Aaron Donald, Syracuse’s Marvin Harrison, Oklahoma’s Josh Heupel, Ohio State’s James Laurinaitis, Washington State’s Ryan Leaf, California’s Marshawn Lynch, Illinois’ Simeon Rice and Florida State’s Peter Warrick.
Among coaches on the ballot are Larry Coker, Gary Patterson and Chris Petersen.
Coker led the Canes to consecutive national championship games and won the 2002 Rose Bowl to become the first rookie head coach to lead his team to a title since 1948. Patterson is TCU’s all-time wins leader who led the Horned Frogs to six AP top 10 final rankings. Petersen is Boise State’s all-time wins leader who led the Broncos to two undefeated seasons and led Washington to the 2016 College Football Playoff.
The NFF also announced an adjustment to the eligibility criteria for coaches to be considered for induction. The minimum career winning percentage required for coaching eligibility will go from .600 to .595 beginning in 2027.
The change would make Mike Leach eligible. Leach, who died in 2022, had a .596 winning percentage with a 158-107 record over 21 seasons at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State.
Leach was known for his innovative wide-open offenses and his knack for pulling upsets. He won 18 games against Top 25 opponents when his team was unranked.
ESPN has released its 2025 Football Power Index (FPI) ratings and projections, and our college football reporters are here to break them down.
The ratings, for the uninitiated, include forecasts for every team’s record, its chances of winning a conference title and of course, its probability to make the expanded 12-team playoff and win the national championship.
The FPI is a power rating that tracks each team’s strength relative to an average FBS squad. Teams are rated on offense, defense and special teams, with the values representing points per game.
You can read Neil Paine’s takeaways here and get our staff’s analysis below.
Which team is FPI undervaluing?
Paolo Uggetti: Even though Kenny Dillingham said at Big 12 spring meetings recently that being considered one of the conference’s favorites after being picked to finish last in 2024 is “less fun,” I still think FPI is slightly undervaluing the Sun Devils at No. 24. Sure, they lost star running back Cam Skattebo to the NFL draft, but they also return a quarterback in Sam Leavitt (2,885 yards and 24 touchdowns last year) who could be a Heisman contender, wide receiver Jordyn Tyson (1,101 yards and 10 touchdowns) and defensive back Xavion Alford, among several other starters and stalwarts of last year’s Cinderella season. Dillingham won’t flinch at now being considered a favorite to win the conference and I imagine he’ll have ASU with plenty of fire and motivation come kickoff. It would not shock me to see them make another playoff run.
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Kenny Dillingham: ASU facing a different type of adversity this year
Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham explains the differences his team is facing this season after coming off a Big 12 title last season.
Mark Schlabach: I think you can argue that Clemson is one of the two best teams in the FBS entering the season (along with Penn State), and it’s certainly one of the best 10, so it’s surprising to see them in at No. 11. In our colleague Jordan Reid’s initial 2026 NFL mock draft, he had four Tigers going in the first round, including quarterback Cade Klubnik at No. 1. Three seasons ago, Clemson fans wondered whether Klubnik was the right guy for the job, now he’s considered one of the most polished passers in the sport, after throwing for 3,639 yards with 36 touchdowns and six interceptions last season. The Tigers have the best defensive line in the FBS, and Reid had tackle Peter Woods and edge rusher T.J. Parker going in the top 10, as well. The Tigers open the season against LSU at home and play at South Carolina in the finale, but I can’t see many ACC teams beating them.
Bill Connelly: There are quite a few non-SEC teams we could choose from here, but I’m going to go with No. 39 Iowa. The Hawkeyes have more to replace on defense than usual, but a) I can’t even pretend like they’ll have anything other than a top-10 or top-15 defense until proven otherwise, and b) the offense improved significantly last year (albeit from horrific to merely mediocre) and might have made a lovely QB upgrade by bringing in South Dakota State’s Mark Gronowski. Losing running back Kaleb Johnson hurts, but this very much feels like a top-25-level team to me, one I trust quite a bit more than quite a few of the teams directly ahead of the Hawkeyes in FPI.
Jake Trotter: Indiana did graduate quarterback Kurtis Rourke, who had a fabulous one season for the Hoosiers while propelling them to the playoff and the first 10-win season in school history. Indiana, however, returns several key players from last year’s squad, including All-Big Ten receiver Elijah Sarratt, defensive end Mikail Kamara, linebacker Aiden Fisher and cornerback D’Angelo Ponds. The Hoosiers also added Cal transfer quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who brought plenty of experience (19 career starts) with him to Bloomington. Curt Cignetti has already proved he can coach. And with no Ohio State or Michigan on the schedule, it wouldn’t be completely stunning if Indiana knocks on the door of playoff contention once again.
Which team is FPI overvaluing?
Trotter: So we’re doing this again, huh? Every preseason, Texas A&M gets top-10 hype. Every season, the Aggies fail to deliver on it. Texas A&M has reached double-digit wins just once this century (the Johnny Football year in 2012). And yet, FPI is giving them the benefit of doubt again as the No. 8-ranked team. Mike Elko is a terrific coach and the Aggies, as always, have talent, including intriguing dual-threat sophomore quarterback Marcel Reed. But the Aggies ranked 51st last year in offensive EPA and 47th in defensive EPA. That hardly screams top 10 team. What’s really there to suggest the Aggies will be any different than what they’ve been?
Connelly: We can’t say for sure that FPI is overvaluing Texas because if Arch Manning lives up to his hype, the Longhorns really might be the best team in the country. However, if he’s merely very good instead of great, then holes elsewhere might become problematic. This is, after all, a team that lost four offensive line starters, its top four defensive linemen and two of the best DBs in the country in Jahdae Barron and Andrew Mukuba. Steve Sarkisian has obviously recruited well, the replacements for those lost linemen could be excellent, and Texas will be very good regardless. But they’re only No. 1 if Arch is an All-American. No pressure.
Uggetti: I’m having a hard time with Miami all the way up at No. 9. I can see the case for it: They have a solid core of players returning throughout the roster and head coach Mario Cristobal and his staff were transfer portal merchants this offseason, bringing in several offensive weapons such as wideouts CJ Daniels (LSU), Keelan Marion (BYU) and Tony Johnson (Cincinnati) as well as some much needed help in the secondary via cornerback Xavier Lucas (Wisconsin) and safety Zechariah Poyser (Jacksonville State). Of course, the crux of the hype surrounding the Hurricanes hinges on their biggest portal addition, quarterback Carson Beck. After losing Cameron Ward to the draft, Cristobal & Co. are banking on Beck (who is coming off surgery for a torn UCL in his right elbow) to be the guy who was supposed to lead Georgia to a national title. Count me among the skeptics.
Schlabach: Given what transpired at Tennessee in the spring, I’m not sure the Volunteers are a top-25 team heading into the season, let alone one that should be ranked No. 10. I didn’t have the Volunteers ranked in my latest Way-Too-Early Top 25. I could see the Vols going one of two ways after quarterback Nico Iamaleava up and left for UCLA following an NIL dispute: The Vols are going to be better off with quarterback Joey Aguilar and his teammates will rally around him, or Augilar’s leap from Appalachian State to the SEC is too high. The Vols were already facing an uphill climb on offense, in my opinion, after SEC leading rusher Dylan Sampson departed, along with three of the team’s top receivers.
Which power conference team outside the FPI top 25 can make a run?
Trotter: Texas Tech landed the nation’s top transfer portal class, beefing up the trenches on both sides of the ball to a team that went 8-5 last season. With 24 career starts behind him, quarterback Behren Morton should be even better after throwing for 3,335 yards and 27 touchdowns last year. If the portal additions playing up front defensively, combined with the arrival of new defensive coordinator Shiel Wood, can bolster a unit that ranked just 108th in EPA last year, the Red Raiders could threaten for a conference title and playoff berth in what figures to be another wide-open Big 12.
Connelly: I would say that half the Big 12 is capable of playing at a top-15 or top-20 level and making a conference title (and, therefore, CFP) run, but I’m particularly intrigued by the duo of No. 32 TCU and No. 33 Baylor. They both won six of their last seven to end the season, and they both return stellar quarterbacks in Josh Hoover (TCU) and Sawyer Robertson (Baylor). I feel like I trust TCU’s returning personnel more, but Baylor’s Dave Aranda was extremely active in the transfer portal, too. The Revivalry — hey, it’s a better name than Bluebonnet Battle — is on October 18, and the winner will probably head into November as a serious Big 12 contender.
Uggetti: Washington (No. 27) had a disappointing 6-7 season in its first year in the Big 12 under new coach Jedd Fisch. The Huskies finished ninth in the conference and seem to have quietly stumbled into the shadow of their more successful Pacific Northwest neighbor, Oregon. But Fisch, like he showed at Arizona, can build a successful team over time. Washington brought in a top-25 recruiting class this past year and added some much-needed defensive reinforcements in the portal. Snagging four-star wide receiver Johntay Cook II from Texas will be a boon for expected starting quarterback Demond Williams Jr. who, after showing some flashes last season, could be primed for a breakout.
Which team’s odd ranking will be proven correct by the end of the season?
Schlabach: There’s a smorgasbord of “odd” rankings to select from. I think you can argue that No. 8 Texas A&M, No. 14 Auburn, No. 16 Oklahoma and No. 19 USC are probably ranked too high, and No. 12 LSU, No. 29 BYU, No. 31 Indiana and No. 35 Texas Tech are too low. LSU might have the SEC’s best quarterback in Garrett Nussmeier, and coach Brian Kelly struck gold in the transfer portal, landing defensive ends Patrick Payton (Florida State) and Jack Pyburn (Florida), receivers Nic Anderson (Oklahoma) and Barion Brown (Kentucky), offensive linemen Braelin Moore (Virginia Tech) and Josh Thompson (Northwestern) and cornerback Mansoor Delane (Virginia Tech). But LSU’s schedule is difficult, with road games at Clemson, Ole Miss, Alabama and Oklahoma, and I’m not sure they’ll be better than 9-3, which would put them right about No. 12.
Uggetti: I’ll take one of the teams Mark mentioned and focus on USC. At first glance, I was also surprised that FPI has them all the way up to No. 19 given the Trojans are coming off a disappointing 7-6 debut season in the Big 10. But the Trojans have made several strides this offseason, not just as a program by hiring general manager Chad Bowden from USC, but also as a team to put themselves in position to surprise in 2025. The defense continues to use the portal to add key talent such as defensive tackles Jamaal Jarrett (Georgia) and Keeshawn Silver (Kentucky). The most exciting player on the team, however, may be incoming freshman defensive lineman Jahkeem Stewart, who is likely to make an impact right away. A lot of the Trojans’ hopes this season are riding on quarterback Jayden Maiava and how he fares in his first full season as a starter. He finished with 1,201 yards and 11 touchdowns last season and a second year in Lincoln Riley’s offense should serve him well. USC’s schedule starts off slow, but the true test of the Trojans’ potential will be on the back end when they face a stretch of Illinois, Michigan and Notre Dame before finishing the season with Oregon, Iowa and UCLA.
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